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Lawkeeper |
Category of Transapientech/Godtech Hypersentient Warrior-Priest Ship used by the Negentropy Alliance, each uniquely and personally appointed by the Judge AI God, to protect citizens and other complex (far from thermodynamic equilibrium) structures within Alliance Space, and even beyond Negentropy borders, if the situation is felt appropriate (nanoswarms, Blights, autowar aggression, etc.). Negentropist ideology would not allow them to stand by while a star system outside sephirotic space, home to a diverse and complex culture, is reduced to a cruder and more entropic state.
A Lawkeeper is essentially a high transapient (SI:3 with SI:2 subsystems) mobile ISO several hundred meters in diameter, equipped with advanced reactionless drive, shielding, and pico- and femto-tech weaponry, as well as being able to alter shape to some extent to pass through smaller gauge wormholes. However, minimum size is determined by fixed exotic-matter stabilisation structures within the drive core.
Lawkeepers have Pitch Field Drives, rather than the more efficient but unstable Bias Singularity Drive. One or more GUT Reactors generate power, and can also make amat on the fly when needed (for warheads or other purposes). They are equipped with a range of nano-, pico- and femto-tech weaponry, defense systems, and sensors, as well as several offensive-defensive godtech devices provided to each in a sacred initiation ceremony and as a Sign of Office by the Judge Emself in a special ceremony on Negentropy Prime.
A Lawkeeper is not a seraiph; the basic hull is still a hylonano vessel that serves as the support-base infrastructure for the higher tech generation units, so the extensive pico-devices are embedded within the hylonano, and the femto-devices within the pico-devices in turn.
Most Lawkeepers carry lower toposophic (sapient and low transapient) "crew". These are more correctly diplomats and liaison officers who are there to put at ease clades, polities, or civilizations that would be intimidated by having to deal with a high transapient ISO. These Officers are all selected from the best stock and greatest psychological capability of their clades, and many are specifically gengineered (if bionts) or constructed and programmed (if vecs) for that task. There are however also those Officers who are volunteers, and to be accepted for a Tour of Duty on a Lawkeeper is one of the highest honours a sapient can have in the Negentropy Alliance. Even more so is to fulfill eir office in a creative and efficient way that helps maintain and encourage the increase in complex structures and other phenomena far from thermodynamic equilibrium, or which furthers the role of the Alliance in the Civilized Galaxy.. Many are the tales and virch-interactives of Culture Heroes, actual historical figures, who were volunteers that served with distinction.
Despite the formidable weaponry at eir disposal, Lawkeepers and eir Officers are always polite and diplomatic when encountering new clades or civilizations, even low tech ones. Politeness and elaborate etiquette is often a very important part of meetings and relationships between interstellar and inter-toposophic civilizations where each party has little or no idea what the other party's motives are.
Lawkeepers visit polities not only within Alliance Space, but also (if invited) on good will tours to other sephirotics, and to polities and regions outside Sephirotic Civilization. Sometimes a neutral polity or civilization in the Hinteregions or Outer Volumes facing a threat from a superior aggressor will call upon a Lawkeeper for aid or mediation. The Lawkeeper and eir sophonts will always try to resolve the situation in a peaceful manner, but if this fails, e will not hesitate to deploy force. Lawkeepers generally have little to do with hiders, cloudharvesters, and other secretive clades that keep to themselves and don't interact with the rest of the galaxy.
Curiously, Lawkeepers played little role in the Version War, except when defending important centers of Alliance Civilization, or at the end, working with Communion Empaths to help in the peace process. This has caused some to think that the Version War really had nothing to do with the higher order toposophics, or worse, was deliberately engineered by them as a way of "rearranging the furniture" so to speak of the lower toposophic civilization (for example some WH had too high an Empire Time gradient and were preventing further development). Even today, archailectologians and negentropist-watchers argue about the more subtle role and memetic purpose of the Lawkeepers.
